“You mustn’t do that,” she said, speaking quickly.  “You mustn’t look out of the window or come to the door.  There are a hundred men beating the mountain to find you.”

She closed the door and locked it on the inside.  While Ford lifted her basket to the desk in the centre of the room she drew the green curtain hastily, covering the window.  Her movements were so rapid that he could catch no glimpse of her face, though he had time to note again the curious silence that marked her acts.  The dog emitted a low growl.

“You must go in here,” she said, decisively, throwing open the door of the inner room.  “You mustn’t speak or look out unless I tell you.  I’ll bring you your breakfast presently.  Lie down, Micmac.”

The gesture by which she forced him across the threshold was compelling rather than commanding.  Before he realized that he had obeyed her, he was standing alone in the darkness, with the sound of a low voice of liquid quality echoing in his ears.  Of her face he had got only the hint of dark eyes flashing with an eager, non-Caucasian brightness—­eyes that drew their fire from a source alien to that of any Aryan race.

But he brushed that impression away as foolish.  Her words had the unmistakable note of cultivation, while a glance at her person showed her to be a lady.  He could see, too, that her dress, though simple, was according to the standard of means and fashion.  She was no Pocahontas; and yet the thought of Pocahontas came to him.  Certainly there was in her tones, as well as in her movements, something akin to this vast aboriginal nature around him, out of which she seemed to spring as the human element in its beauty.

He was still thinking of this when the door opened and she came in again, carrying a plate piled high with cold meat and bread-and-butter.

“I’m sorry it’s only this,” she smiled, as she placed it before him; “but I had to take what I could get—­and what wouldn’t be missed.  I’ll try to do better in future.”

He noted the matter-of-fact tone in which she uttered the concluding words, as though they were to have plenty of time together; but for the moment he was too fiercely hungry to speak.  For a few seconds she stood off, watching him eat, after which she withdrew, with the light swiftness that characterized all her motions.

He had nearly finished his meal when she returned again.

“I’ve brought you these,” she said, not without a touch of shyness, against which she struggled by making her tone as commonplace as possible.  “I shall bring you more things by degrees.”

On a chair beside that on which he was sitting she laid a pair of slippers, a pair of socks, a shirt, a collar, and a tie.

He jumped up hastily, less in surprise than in confusion.

“I can’t take anything of Judge Wayne’s—­” he began to stammer; but she interrupted him.

“I understand your feelings about that,” she said, simply.  “They’re not Judge Wayne’s; they were my father’s.  I have plenty more.”